Volkwin Marg Turns 90
gmp founding partner celebrates his 90th birthday on October 15, 2026
Volkwin Marg will celebrate his 90th birthday on October 15, 2026. Beginning with the major Berlin-Tegel Airport project in the mid-1960s, Marg, a founding partner of von Gerkan, Marg and Partners Architects (gmp), has helped shape architectural culture in Germany and internationally for more than six decades. Today, gmp is one of Germany’s largest architecture firms, with more than 500 employees working around the world.
In 1965, Volkwin Marg and his university friend Meinhard von Gerkan (1935–2022) founded the architecture firm gmp · von Gerkan, Marg and Partners in Hamburg. Since then, the firm has completed more than 600 projects of all types in 25 countries. In Germany, gmp has realized around 300 projects across all of the country’s federal states, with a particularly strong presence in Hamburg and Berlin, home to the firm’s two largest offices.
Over the course of his more than 60-year career, Volkwin Marg has focused in particular on sports and exhibition venues, transportation and infrastructure projects, urban planning, and building and renovation projects in historic settings. Among his best-known projects, designed in collaboration with his partners and project teams, are the European Patent Office in Munich, the Leipzig Exhibition Centre, the Rimini Expo Centre, the remodeling of Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, and the FIFA World Cup stadiums in Cape Town, Durban, and Port Elizabeth (South Africa 2010), as well as Brasília, Manaus, and Belo Horizonte (Brazil 2014). His work also includes the national stadiums in Warsaw and Kyiv for the 2012 UEFA European Championship and the renovation of the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu in Madrid.
In his home city of Hamburg, Volkwin Marg has had a lasting impact on the city’s urban development. Among other initiatives, he played a key role in launching the development of HafenCity, for which he presented the first urban design proposal as early as 1997.
Volkwin Marg continues to work as an architect and urban planner to this day. For many years, he was also active in professional organizations, serving, among other roles, as president of the Association of German Architects (BDA) from 1979 to 1984. From 1986 to 2003, he was a professor of urban planning and design at the Faculty of Architecture at RWTH Aachen University. Marg has received numerous honors for his contributions to architecture, urban culture, and civic life, including the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class and the Bürgermeister-Stolten-Medaille (Mayor Stolten Medal) of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg.
From November 28, 2026, through April 4, 2027, the East Prussian State Museum in Lüneburg will honor the architect with the special exhibition “Siegfried Lenz and Volkwin Marg: Two East Prussians in Hamburg.” The exhibition was conceived to mark the 100th anniversary of Siegfried Lenz’s birth and Volkwin Marg’s 90th birthday.
